WI School Teaches Diversity Course on ‘White Privilege’

There is little doubt that white privilege existed in the past, and still exists today. The difference between then and now is a society-wide awareness of privilege that somewhat mitigates the advantages of being white. We pass laws dealing with the effects of inequality, but ultimately, the law can only go so far in dealing with the problem. White privilege is what it is largely because whites are a super-majority of the population, and while we always haven’t lived up to the words in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, thanks to the genius of the Founders, we have the capacity to change, to strive for a better society. This is an exceptional part of our nature as a country and is a story equally worthy to be told as the narrative of white privilege. In fact, it would be simple common sense to tell these compelling stories alongside one another.

But the goal of the class in diversity at the Wisconsin high school is not to teach, not to inform, but to brainwash students. The key is the use of the word “oppressor.” I doubt sincerely whether the proponents of teaching this class would know what oppression is even if it came up and bit them in the butt. Real oppression is standing up in a public meeting and complaining about being oppressed — and then getting taken out back by authorities, lined up against a wall, and shot. There are still several dozen countries where this is basically true, and the real courage of fighters for freedom in those countries who risk their lives every day make the leftist lickspittles who try to fill the heads of impressionable kids with their oppression fantasies look like the propagandists they truly are.

It was true at one time in America that a black man speaking out about racism and equality was putting himself in grave danger. Those days are gone. “Speaking truth to power” in America is no longer a risky proposition. Rocking the boat by screaming “racism” or “oppression” at the drop of a hat makes one a celebrated personage, invited on all the best talk shows and feted in leftist salons from one end of the country to the other. Activism has become a big business with big-name attorneys and PR firms like David Fenton’s shop applying a professional sheen to the rough edges.

There is no value in teaching a course on white privilege that fails to give any context — historical, social, cultural — and substitutes hysterical charges of “oppression” for thoughtful analysis. Stupid analogies like the Wal-Mart doll test is typical. If the doll manufacturer made as many black dolls as white dolls, they would be out of business in one season. Not because people don’t want the black dolls because they are racists or exercising some fantasy form of “White Privilege,” but because little girls generally want dolls that reflect who they are — including what race they belong to. Since there are four times more white girls than black girls, the doll manufacturer would be committing suicide if it manufactured three times as many black dolls than could possibly be sold.

Is this simple, grade-school economic fact relayed to the students sent to Wal-Mart to sniff out white privilege? I doubt it.

Politics and education don’t mix. The school district should stop teaching this course unless the leftist politics are removed and objective analysis replaces it.

Absolutely ‘K’. Moran willfully accepts the false premise because truth be known Moran is a closet lib but that’s for another day, then tries to frame the debate from there. It’s a persistently bad habit and grating on the nerves.

It’s like “white privilege” was manna dropped from heaven and not earned.

We can have this discussion when the origin of the word slave is known. Until about 1860 a land owner in Eastern Europe could take out a mortgage on the life of a serf on his land. No need for transport from a distant continent.

Nothing good comes from this.

By their fruits you shall know them. Everything they do is designed to tear people down.

“There is little doubt that white privilege existed in the past, and still exists today.”

This is utter nonsense. The idea that the success of a given culture, in this case a fusion of European then American, is a numbers/majority game is hogwash. In cases where minorities have self-contained cultures of brilliance it shows. No one stops people, especially within insulated cultures from inventing things or distinguishing themselves. They simply create their own institutions and others come running. People are not running to black colleges – not my fault.

Malaysia had to pass a law a long time ago called “bumipatra” because the Chinese super-minority were so successful.

The East India Company eventually took over the Indian sub-continent though they were a tiny sliver of a minority. Where did privilege play a role there?

Cortes and a few hundred men marched into the heart of an empire based mostly on the superiority of their combined arms tactics and incredible resolve and daring.

There is no such thing as white privilege, there is only success. I leave it to others to define this success racially, for in fact that has nothing to do with it.

People who believe in white privilege are morons, and racist ones at that.

There is no such thing as white culture – Americans don’t define themselves like that – there is only shared values and they are not based on skin. Whites compete with each other tooth and nail and my skin color gets short shrift in any competitive process and there are no secret handshakes.

Any fool knows this.

No one lauds my photography because I am white nor does anyone publish my novels because of this. I don’t get my car fixed faster, the best seats on the bus or smiles walking down the street.

Ha, ha. Privilege creates itself. It cannot be passed on as a gift. If you don’t measure up, it’s worthless.

It’s an age old fantasy: that the ruling class are secretly a group of lucky, square, clueless and dumb misfits operating on the fumes of privilege, while the Freman, the rats in the walls, are secretly superior.

Well, guess what: reality doesn’t work like that. There’s a reason people are not successful. There’s fantasy based on blame, excuses and self-pity and there’s what works in actual life. It’s fine for genre novels and movies, even fun – there’s a ton of them. In real life, don’t teach it to your kids. If they’re white they’ll be effectively lobotomized. If they’re an ethnic minority they’ll grow sullen and stupid.

Let’s be clear: anyone of any color who looks up to Rev. Wright, Kanye West, Li’l Wayne, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Alice Johnson, Melissa Harris-Perry, Maya Angelou, Maxine Waters, and a whole host of other idiots, has no chance in this world – none.

You are incredibly well-written, and your points are well thought out. It is a pleasure to read a comment online that doesn’t remind me of the ramblings of a fourth grader, and an anti-anti-white sentiment that doesn’t appear to be written by a pseudo-literate member of the KKK. Well done, sir or madam. If you have a website or blog with more of your insights, I would humbly request a link. For comic effect, I will proceed to do so in a way that even those who weren’t burdened with an overabundance of intelligence expect that white people talk.
Come on, my cracker! We The Man! We gotz ta do wut we kanz to keep teh bruthas down! Link to dat shit!

I despise the KKK. But they’re not in our NY Thanksgiving Day Parade and singing the National Anthem at a SF Giants baseball game like West and Wayne. There’s the diff right there – mainstreaming racism.

Show me a HBCU that is not at capacity with a broad enrollment of international students. Let me select a very small HBCU as an example. The business, math, pre-med track and biotechnology departments of Claflin University are renounded around the globe and highly competitive to gain admission to. Emory University and its school of medicine is but another example. Fort valley State University, a USDA research institution, Howard University, Morehouse College and medical school, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, South carolina State University Science, Mathematics & Engineering Technology, Southern University, The University of Texas at El Paso and the list goes on!

All eight of my children were educated in HBCU’s and the oldest is 56. Generally speaking you’re right that they were a bit isolationists, but that is changing dramatically with ‘most’ HBCUs today. Many of them actively recruit for the best minds of all races and attempt to increase their white admissions but there remains a stigma on the part of many whites. Just as a side note: Who would you suspect are the most racist on HBCU campuses? Nope! you’re wrong! The most ractist, are the black and of color international students towards american black students.

Please pay attention to what you said here. Am I supposed to give credit to “white males” for giving freedom that should not have been taken in the first place? I am thankful that people, many of whom happened to be white males, saw other people being oppressed and worked to ensure that all could enjoy equal rights. What I hope is that people do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. i’ll give people who actually worked and continue to work toward equality credit.

Oh, chill your jets, people, and look at data instead of vomiting tired points of 20th century Boomer/Gen X ideology and old dead categories. It’s 2013 on a planet where the leading minds and societies still don’t understand the exponential function of a fixed rate of growth.

Delavan-Darien school district. Main player there is Delavan. Delavan is about 30% Latino, mostly people moving up from Chicago.

So of course there are people furthering their careers by pandering to the idea that “white privilege” exists and is a demon. There’s a ready audience in many ways.

The bigger question is what the nature of that class was. Was it one time only? One semester? A week? Was it a required or elective course? How was the curriculum structured? I seriously doubt this was an official curriculum offering. For one thing, it relied on the work of Robert Jensen, who is as big a left wing chucklehead and hot air balloon as anything on that reactionary pole. Dood has made a career out of being extreme, hysterical, and shrill.

I think that kids SHOULD be exposed to this sort of pap, at school, so they know how to confront it in the future. And before they get to college.

This isn’t about “leftists,” it’s about predictable demographic change caused primarily by illegal immigration driven primarily by business owners who want cheap labor who will undercut local, and organized, blocs of workers who used to be primarily white.

Meanwhile the PJers will rail against unions.

And it’s about one course at one school at one time. Let’s get more facts before sounding like conservative wackaloons who have Fox News’s fist up our downspouts.

BTW, Walworth county is much whiter and richer than Delavan per se, and many of the Latinos in Delavan are legal agricultural workers more likely to vote tea party than anything else. Yall need to get out more and not rely on what corporate media tell you in their drive to homogenize all places into their simplistic kneejerk views.

Tama are typical leftist trash, get a life. Go post your dribble somewhere where your looser, leftist buddies can drool over it. keep sticking to your victim mentality, it will get you a long way in the obozo welfare line.

Seems to me like is well overdue to teach a few classes about the historical inadequacy and spectacular failure of brown and black culture, and just how lucky these poor oppressed people may be, as they use now seven or eight generations of grievance excuse while standing in line for another Obamaphone.

It should be relatively easy to do. We’ll make comparison of the black status, ‘privilege’ and earning power of any African nation for black men and women governing themselves, not a white face to be had, vis-a-vis these poor, poor oppressed African Americans and see how they stack up.

But even easier, will be the interviews conducted of the very brown wall climbing, ditch digging, river floating, sardine stacking oppressed of our Southern borders, fleeing the white brown oppression as I stand near the fence for interview.

“Just a couple of quick questions, kind sir, if I may ask about your experiences in Nuevo Laredo before you beeline it to San Antonio with wife and passel of kids, if you would?”

If Barack Obama has done one thing good for America, it’s that he’s made the term RACIST a word worthy of mockery.

This is based on a document called “The 10C’s: A Model of Diversity Awareness and Social Change” that Harvard Graduate School of Education pushes. In late July President Obama signed an Executive Order imposing a Positive School Climate on all public schools. As part of that both the ASCD as part of their Whole Child Common Core initiative and the Nationl School Climate Center are pushing these 10Cs.

In my lifetime [which began before 1945] we have gone from “separate but equal” which was brought to us by the Democrats. Woodrow Wilson, the father of “progressivism”, established it in DC in 1914. Eisenhower and “Brown vs Board of Education” and the Republican Party brought us the beginning of educational freedom and equality in 1954. Meanwhile, in 1957 LBJ removed all Federal enforcement provisions from the voting act. Eventually, we got to the various equal rights amendments to our civil rights laws, and began to achieve some quality from about 1975 on.

So now we have a black population of about 12% of our total and an Hispanic population of roughly equal size [and about half of which is illegal] trying to say they are oppressed and deserve….what? How about our Asian population which experiences more discrimination in all educational endeavors because they “over succeed” when left to equal treatment on the basis of merit.

Our nation has succeeded thusfar on the basis of merit. It cannot succeed on the basis of a hand out.

“On the surface, a class studying ‘White Privilege’ might be useful — from a historical perspective.”

Umm, no, a class on “White Privilege” is not useful in any instance. White people have got to stop being stupid in feeding this monster of condoned racism on the parts of minorities. It will not end up well for you.

“a set of advantages that are believed to be enjoyed by white people beyond those commonly experienced by non-white people in the same social, political, and economic spaces (nation, community, workplace, income, etc.”

I just realized I’ve been making a mistake. I’ve always assumed people who believe white privilege is a problem in our society are misreading trends in race and socio-economic status. Whites are more likely to be economically privileged, mostly due to differences in education and relation to the welfare state. I thought that progressives were mistaking these trends for some sort of systemic bias for whites, but now I see they really believe that whites have some sort of systemic advantage beyond trends in upbringing.

If anything, the upper levels of our society grant a privilege to minorities of the same economic status as whites. Our colleges and graduate schools routinely make whites (and Asians) outperform other groups to have the same chance of acceptance.

I’m a white male. I’ve been friends with a black female since kindergarten. We stayed together throughout our primary, secondary, and even undergraduate education. We both were in the same, excellent pre-medical undergraduate program. I made excellent grades. I’m not sure of what kind of grades she made, but I believe they were very good as well. She could have gone to nearly any medical school in the country. My choice was limited to one medical school, my local state medical school, the most likely to accept me. (I’m sorry if it sounds like I’m complaining. I do realize how privileged I am to attend med school).

In my undergraduate education, all biology majors were required to present a seminar on some leading-edge research. Upon introducing the presenting student, a faculty member would always tell the audience about the student’s post-graduate plans. Most students were going into some sort of clinical field (MD, PA, PharmD, etc.). Men were mostly accepted only by a local professional school, while women usually had a plethora of choices.

Of course, I believe PJMedia has posted the table of Medical school acceptance based on GPA and race. Med schools (including mine) pretend to have race neutral policies, stating they accept the same racial ratio as the application racial ratio. However, the races simply aren’t balanced, so med schools end up taking less qualified minorities over more qualified whites and Asians.

Even if taught by “SnowBalls”(white on the outside..black on the inside), this is a take on “Oreos”(black-outside/white-inside) or Apples(first invaders… red outside/white inside). However I call Snowballs….’Dovers… as in “Bend Over”. Race traitors the terms all are.

When I was a college student, I had a professor share with the class his theory that white people oppressed everyone else without being aware of it. At the end of class I went up and told him I found what he said offensive and I’d be dropping the class. He tried to argue with me but I told him I thought judging people on the basis of their skin color was racist and that was the end of it as far as I was concerned.

If one looks at facts, leaving cheap ideological cliches aside, one discovers that there are twice as many whites in poverty in the U.S. as there are blacks in poverty. Apparently, these 25 million or so whites didn’t get the memo on “white privilege.” But then as one brilliant writer recently put it, facts are little more than dog biscuits at the banguet table of ‘world class’ intellectuals.

“But no one can deny that we have made great strides toward equality, mostly because of a consensus achieved by all races that the more equal we are before the law, the better country we are.”

I wish people could be more open minded on this topic. Populist progress was made post WWII. However, there has always remained generational, geographical and economic divide components involved in the progression. Once one can see these variables and understand them, they can then approach such topics as this with an open mind. The term “white privilege” is a very stark term for most whites and when used, for some reason, it moves them to be defensive and in denial. Facts, sometimes paints a not very pretty picture but makes it no less factual.

The pure and working poverty classes across all races, are relatively equal in social and economic status, in the at they’re isolated and essentially off other classes radar. They don’t get wrapped up in these kinds populists race discussions.

The upper middle and upper classes are essentially in an isolated circumstance much the same as the poverty classes.

Where all the rumbling mostly comes from, is within the low middle and middle classes of Americans. Here is where race research data comes in to play and becomes very interesting.

Now if you look at historical income despairity across all races in the U.S. from WWII through the 70s, you’ll find that they were coming much closer together. From the 80s forward that desparity gap has continually been spreading again. However, within that widening gap when differentiating for race, in the middle classes, its not a pretty picture. Thats the economic reality of today. I think the variables and causation(s) are a legitimate discussion for all.

On the social side, I like to think that theres been rather good progress made through the decades until the political elections starting in 2000 through this past election. My own observations tend to leave an impression that race relations between whites blacks and others of color, has increasingly begun to reverse itself. America was essentially founded by European whites whom I suspect and fully understand, had a general mentality of national ownership. Given our white history of Native American and African slavery and then immigration of many multicultural races, I think it ‘has’ been a long tough road for the European white heritage to become more tolerant socially and economically with other races.

i’m a college professor who’s heard all this dreck so many times. . . had a colleague who lectured me about how my kids were the beneficiaries of white male privilege. i asked her if that included my oldest, who has a profound neurological disability. . . she was flummoxed for a little while then answered that he was part of the ‘disability community.’ these people are deranged. they are also in power across academia. the saving grace is that most students hate this nonsense.

“There is little doubt that white privilege existed in the past, and still exists today.”

See how they dominate perception. Posts in the comment thread talk about ‘classes’. The United States has no actual ‘classes’. But we blithely accept terminology that puts us at each others throats–to our detriment and to the advantage of the left.

Let us not help them destroy us while trying to defend ourselves. Think about what you say, remove leftist infiltrations of your thought processes before coming to conclusions.

White people are under assault by the establishment just for being white, and have been for forty years. This assault includes incendiary rhetoric and hostile action in government and the educational establishment. This is precisely why white people need guns….with 30 round clips, where mechanically appropriate. If the government makes this illegal, it will be taken care of covertly. I’m not making any recommendations, just an analysis and predictions based thereon.

I also guess it was “white priviledge” when my grandparents were so poor they moved into a old chicken house without plumbing or electricity and converted it into a house. I suppose it was “white priviledge” when my father wore clothes made from cotton feed sacks sewn by my Grandmother?

Full time college, full time job to pay for that college, and building his family a home ALL AT THE SAME TIME my father by hard work achieved the America Dream. He never had one of those “white priviledge” cards either.

Mr. Moran I invite you to go perform an anatomically impossible act upon yourself. Good day.

“There is little doubt that white privilege existed in the past, and still exists today.”
What a piece of uneducated and racist drivel!
I will not even try to discuss the imbecillity of the notion of “white” from a genetic perspective. How would you categorize albinos Africans or Aboriginals?
There were certainly NO privileges in my family. That is why we took part in the French revolutions in 1789, 1830, 1848 and 1870.
Prof and Real Deal have said it perfectly well.
It is also exactly what myself and my wife, my parents and my grandparents have done, in France and in Canada, since the 1920s.

What is deeply worrying is the systematic and calculated attempt at detroying our democracies by the racialization of discourse, and demonization of the other.

The idea of white privilege is based on Deductive reasoning. It is the nature of the culture which produces efficiency and success, or inefficiency of the usual types. Leftist reasoning and philosophy is heavily dependent on Deductive reasoning, and the Left is accustomed to not questioning it.

When I was in high school a long time ago, we were taught the US government was going to shrink and disappear, replaced by the UN. We learned all the committees and some subcommittees and their acronyms, and who was the committee head. We also learned that Uncle Joe was a really great guy. Uncle Joe was sort of edited out by 1950. We also learned that the Great Depresssion started in 1920, but no one knew it until 1929 as it was hidden by the movie industry and the spread of gas stations. That is what was in the book. At least we knew when the Civil War occurred.

Except for the brain-numbed union thugs, elitist of hollyweird and uber-wealthy and pols, why would any clear thinking white American be or vote for leftism and leftist pols? Because apparently you are all privileged and should NOT have your jobs… Think about that you pig union jackboots and hollyweird scum.

So are these idiots at this school, demonizing the very white Americans who they voted for because there are not many minorities in WI, don’cha know… And are they similarly upset with the white Americans in the WON’s cabinet including the newly minted officials….or that the left gets most of its money from wealthy, guilt-ridden white elitests…. If not then who are the privileged whites they are complaining about?

Sorry but I still can’t really get my head around what I am reading. This dreck is exactly why “education” is such a joke these days–can’t do math or understand science but we have the non-academic, pseudo-science grievience mongering down pat!

“a set of advantages BELIVED to be enjoyed”

See its “belief”–which allows you to get away without empirical proofs. And as a plus its almost impossible to prove a negative, even harder when your dealing with a “belief.”

“There is not space here to list all the ways in which white privlega plays out”

How about ONE way–or maybe several?

“Count the number of dolls representative of blacks as opposed to whites”

Huh???? With the “white” population trending at around 70%–significantly more or less depending the exact ethinci makeup where you live—why should this surprise anyone?

I always to get a “white privlege” person in front of a camera and ask them to DEFINE the term “privilege” and the term “law.”

Even if true–which it is not–there is a SIGNIFIANT difference between “privilege” and LEGAL rights–a “privlege”–even should it exsist may or may not be extended or may or may not confer any significant advantage. Whereas LEGAL rights ALWAYS carry advantage.

I would happily trade my non-exsitant “privilege” for very concrete LEGAL RIGHTS.

What is taught in the colleges will eventually drain into primary education. I suggest you look at David Roediger’s Wages of Whiteness, what is considered the flagship work on “white studies.” It is a rather unique field in that, unlike “Black studies” or “Latino studies,” “white studies” is a field dedicated to tearing down it subject rather than building it up – hell, they don’t even capitalize “white” when they capitalize the others. It is all utter garbage, and it is standard reading at most universities.

Likewise, I suggest you take into account what most of the comments here have argued: do not accept the basic concept of “white privilege.” There was a time that European peoples were considered barbarians, likewise, there was a time that the United States was a backwater nation by comparison to much of the world. There is something to be said for working to achieve one’s place, but it would seem that leftists are allergic to the concept of work. Don’t be lazy, too.

Excellent post. Everyone knows that white people are the oppressed people of America and always have been since the founding of our country. Native Americans, blacks, the Irish, Germans, Italians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans; all have oppressed the white man and continue to do so. Whites no longer enjoy any privileged position in our society, these so-called “minorities” are in all of the positions of power, from the presidency on down. It is time for affirmative action for white people to undo the gross advantages these non-whites have attained. This has got to stop.

Do the non-Chinese living in China complain about Chinese privilege? The USA was founded and built by Christian white people of European ancestry. If you have a problem with that too bad. There are countries all over the world and each has its own privileges. I suggest the malcontents find a country better suited to their issues.